The Lovett School faculty and student blogs are located on a hosted Word Press server. Site administrators include Gina Dixon (IT), Laura Deisley (Director-21st Century Learning , Dana Graham (Director of Educational Technology), and Owen Mathews (Middle School Technology Coordinator).

The following notes and screencasts will enable students and faculty to establish new blogs with the appropriate settings to support their educational use in our classrooms.

Requesting New Blogs

Please contact Laura Deisley, ext 1348 or ldeisley@lovett.org, to determine if blogs are the appropriate tool to support the classroom's learning goals. Laura can help faculty design and establish a blogging practice and procedures, and she will make sure the new blogs are created on the server for each student and/or classroom.

Email Notification

The owner/administrator of a blog will either be the teacher (in the case of a classroom blog) or a student (in the case of individual student blogs). Once a blog has been created, an email will be sent to the blog owner with the blog address (such as wordpress.lovett.org/english8) and a username (english8) and password. The password is server-generated and must be used upon first logging into the blog. It can be changed to something that the blog owner can more easily remember. Please see Changing a Password below.

Logging In

To login to your blog, please type the blog address in the browser window. (Firefox is highly recommended for all on-line editing. Please begin to develop the habit of using the Firefox browser as your default browser.)


The blog will appear in the browser window. Please find the META section of the blog page and click on Log In. (Note: If there is not a META section, you can always log in to your blog by adding /wp-admin to the web address. For example, http://wordpress.lovett.org/emerson/wp-admin will take me to the log in screen for Emerson's blog.) The log in screen will look like the following screen. It is here that you will enter the username and password that were emailed to you.

Changing Default Settings

When you login, you will now be "under the hood" of the blog. This means that you are in an area that only you and the site administrators can access. It is here that you will write your blog posts, design the look and feel of your blog, and generally manage the functionality and personality of your blog. (Students: Please note that your teachers will in many cases require that you do not make certain modifications to your blog. For example in the Middle School, Themes and Widgets are not to be changed from their default or teacher-directed settings unless you are in 8th grade.)

There are some changes which should be made immediately to the blogs in order for them to function as expected for the educational uses we anticipate. Therefore, the following setting changes should be made during this first log in:

Changing Your Password.

Please click on Users in the upper right hand corner of the Dashboard.


Click on Your Profile. (This is a sub tab under the Write, Manage, Design, etc tab.) Type your new password twice and then click on Update Profile.

Adding Required Plug-Ins

In order for videos to play on the blog and certain other functions to work, you will need to activate their plug-ins. Please go to the upper right hand corner again of the window and this time click on Plug-Ins. Here you will want to check the box for each of the Plug-Ins except All In One Video Pack and then click on Activate.

Selecting a New Theme

In certain instances students are permitted to change the Theme (look and feel) of their blog. To change the theme, please click on the Design tab. The default subtab is Theme. Currently there are about 50 different blog styles available, and there are many free blog styles that we can add. To select a new blog style, scroll through the list and double click on the theme you like. (Please notice that the styles are spread across multiple pages.)

META and Other Widgets

If you select a different theme than the default theme, and all of a sudden you don't see a META section on your blog when you view the site, then you need to add a Widget called "Meta." To do this, go back to the Design tab, but this time click on the sub tab labeled Widget. Here you will scroll down and find the Meta tag and click on the button "Add" next to it. This will add it to your side bar. WARNING: Be sure to SAVE CHANGES under the sidebar to make sure the Meta widget is added.

Removing Comment Moderation

As long as the comments that are posted on the blogs are appropriate and in good taste, then we will permit students to turn off the comment moderation setting on their blogs. To do so, click on the Settings link in the upper right hand corner of the Dashboard. Then, click on the Discussion sub-tab in the primary navigation bar. Here you will page down to the "Before A Comment Appears" section. In this area, uncheck the box reading "Comment author must have a previously approved comment." This is the ONLY box that you should uncheck. This will leave one box checked in that section: "Comment author must fill out name and email."